A Spot in the Sun
by CrystalMoon
Summary: John follows Aeryn when she disappears in the woods with something of his.


A Spot in the Sun  
  
by CrystalMoon  
  
Category: Romance Drama/Episode Additions  
Rating: G  
Spoilers: Everything up to and including Fractures  
Summary: When Aeryn takes a mysterious walk in the woods, John goes after her.  
  
When John got back to the transport pod with his pouch full of new anti-grav coils, he found only Rygel. The little slug was lying in the shade taking a nap while his throne sled hovered near a tree. John knelt next to him and tickled Rygel's eyebrows.  
  
Rygel twitched and jerked before his eyes popped open. "Crichton, what the yotz are you doing?" He hmphed and rolled onto his side away from John.  
  
John smiled. He loved teasing Rygel almost as much as he'd loved teasing his black lab with his favorite rope toy. Cold nose, whiskers, eats everything in sight. They weren't that different. "Where is everyone, Guido? We were supposed to meet about now."  
  
"Jool and Chiana commed to say they are still shopping. D'Argo is consuming intoxicants at some seedy local establishment, I'm sure. And Aeryn is off in the forest somewhere."  
  
"The forest?"   
  
"Yes, she went there about half an arn ago."   
  
"Why would she go into the forest?"  
  
"I don't know. Maybe it had something to do with those flimsy wood products she was carrying." Rygel squeezed his eyes shut. "Now leave me alone."  
  
It took John a moment to understand. "Flimsy wood products" meant paper, and if Aeryn had a bunch of paper, then she had to have his notebook. She would never have need for such a primitive material herself, as she'd told him many times.  
  
John stood and turned away from the small town they had landed next to. A dense stretch of woods faced him with no obvious path. He shrugged and headed back toward town, intent on joining D'Argo. Then he stopped again and looked back at the woods, chewing on a thumb.  
  
Ever since Aeryn had come back from Talyn, he'd respected her need to stay isolated from him and the rest of the crew. But this was different. He'd missed his notebook as soon as his twin had taken it, missed staring out at the stars and sketching them, missed the feel of the paper he'd traded a cartridge of chakan oil for, missed the quiet time sketching in it gave him when he didn't have to think about anything but the stars. And Aeryn, of course. He couldn't look at the stars without thinking of her.  
  
He'd wondered why it wasn't with the rest of his things. Now he knew.  
  
"Hey, Rygel, you didn't happen to see which direction she went, did you?"  
  
Rygel answered him with a snore.  
  
John sighed and headed to the edge of the woods, twigs snapping under his feet. As he paced along the wall of dense vegetation, he took a deep breath. The air smelled humid and ripe and wonderful, the way woods smelled on Earth. He could even taste it in the back of his throat. They spent so much time aboard Moya and in cities that he'd forgotten how much he enjoyed being outdoors. John paused to run his fingers along a fern-like plant with a vibrant yellow flower that looked a bit like a rose. Impulsively, he plucked it and tucked it in his belt pouch.   
  
After a bit, he found a several broken branches and what looked like a critter trail leading uphill. John stepped over a rotting log that was crawling with purple wiggly bugs and set off on the trail. He didn't even try to be quiet as he stomped on pods and twigs along the way. He figured it was better not to surprise Aeryn, no matter what she was doing with his notebook.  
  
The trail widened slightly after several hundred yards and John stopped worrying about scratching his arms on the thorns that seemed to cover every branch on this planet. After about a mile, he came to a clearing, a glade actually, filled with wild flowers and fledgling trees.  
  
Aeryn knelt in the middle of it, pushing a power coupler into the ground for odd some reason. It looked like she was digging. The notebook lay beside her.   
  
As John entered the clearing, the sun warmed his shoulders. A pod crackled under his boot.  
  
Aeryn glanced up, startled, her hand reaching for her pulse pistol. When she saw that it was him, she relaxed only slightly, eyes narrowing. She didn't need to say what was evident on her face: what the frell are you doing here?  
  
John felt a vein pulse at his temple. If she wanted to be angry, then so be it. He hadn't done anything wrong. John waded through knee-deep wildflowers and weeds and stopped when he stood across from her.  
  
"That's my notebook." When she didn't deny it, he knelt and picked it up. The paper was warm. He opened the first page, recognizing his first star chart, the one with the real names of the stars, with real coordinates, the one where he thought he was actually making something useful, before he'd realized how futile it was to map out something on paper that was so much more accurate in Moya's database.   
  
He flipped through the pages, smiling at the star names. They reminded him of moments from his life. Emerson, Lake, and Palmer - D'Argo spilling amnexus fluid all over himself after Rygel had knocked loose a fitting. Mickey and Minnie - Chiana giving him her last piece of dahler meat pie for no reason at all. Steelers, Raiders, Browns, and Cowboys - Aeryn wearing her hair down.   
  
And amidst all of his scrawls about Moya and wormholes, his silly labels of other stars, sat one star in the center of every page - Aeryn.  
  
When he looked up, she was staring at him.  
  
"I wondered what'd happened to this," he said, running his fingers across the smooth paper. "It wasn't with my other stuff."  
  
Aeryn continued to stare.  
  
John broke eye contact. "I mean with his other stuff, our stuff," he muttered, flipping to the back of the book. He found new star charts drawn in his handwriting, complete with more silly names surrounding the Aeryn star. John had a weird sense of déjà vu in reverse, like he should remember something he clearly hadn't done.   
  
And on the top of one of the pages, were simple words printed in large letters: bed, cup, ship, gun, sun. He frowned, puzzling out what connection they had to each other.   
  
Then he knew. "He was teaching you English, wasn't he?"   
  
Aeryn finally glanced away. "Yes," she said.  
  
John traced the words with his forefinger. He'd never thought to ask Aeryn if she wanted to learn English. That the other guy had asked, and that Aeryn had agreed, told him more about their closeness than anything else.   
  
He quickly closed the book. "What are you doing here?" He glanced at the power coupler and a small pile of dirt in front of her. "You're digging a hole?"  
  
She didn't answer, so he took that as a yes.  
  
"What for?"  
  
Aeryn sat back on her heels. She picked up the coupler and picked dirt from the end of it with a fingernail. Then she sighed and let her gaze rest on a small tree to the right of him. Her mouth opened and closed once, as if she were making up her mind about something.   
  
John crossed his arms and waited.  
  
A minute later, she started talking. "You told me once that you bury your people in the ground after they die. When John died, we weren't near any suitable planets so we had to release him into space. When I saw that this planet was like Earth, I decided that he would've been happy here. And since I didn't have his body ..."  
  
"You decided to bury his notebook."  
  
Aeryn nodded.  
  
John set the notebook on the ground. He felt brittle and prickly like the thorns that coated every branch in this place. He had a sudden urge to hurry from the glade and leave Aeryn to her grief, to her memories. He couldn't compete. He didn't want to compete. He just wanted to go back to half an arn ago when breathing in the smell of the woods was wonderful and full of home and that was all he thought about.  
  
Then he glanced at Aeryn. She was clenching the coupler so tight her knuckles gleamed. A muscle twitched on the side of her jaw. She looked like she could implode at any moment.  
  
John rubbed his eyes before giving the glade a once over. "You picked a good spot," he said.  
  
Aeryn glanced at him in surprise.  
  
"The flowers are pretty. And we're near a tree. It might be small now, but when it gets bigger this spot'll be in the shade." He took a deep breath, let it out. "It smells really good too. My dad and I used to camp in places kind of like this one."  
  
"It reminds you of Earth?"  
  
John nodded. "Yeah. He'd like it here. The other me. He'd like it a lot."  
  
Aeryn gave him the barest hint of ... something. Not a smile, but a softening around the eyes. Then she drove the coupler into the earth, forcing it through roots and dry soil. It would take time to dig a hole this way.  
  
John got up to stretch his legs, wondering whether he should leave or not. As he walked around the glade, he kicked a loose rock about the size of a softball and then hefted it in his hand, enjoying the solid feel of it. A rock like this would stay put, wouldn't roll away in a storm or at the foot of a running critter. He transferred it to his left hand and picked up another rock and then another until he had an armful.  
  
When he dumped the rocks near Aeryn, she stopped digging and wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. "What are those for?"  
  
"A tombstone," he said. "To mark the grave."   
  
He continued gathering rocks and finished about the same time Aeryn had dug her hole. When John knelt opposite her, she brushed off her hands and picked up the notebook.   
  
"Wait," he said. Although he'd been without his notebook for many months, he hated the idea of never seeing it again. It held so much of his life. "This might sound silly, but I'd like to keep a page for myself."  
  
Aeryn shrugged and handed it to him. John flipped through it until he found a page that made him grin. It reminded him of a day in the center chamber where the whole crew had been laughing and swapping stories throughout dinner. It was during a quiet time before Scorpy's clone had begun whispering in his mind. He'd named the stars Alfalfa, Darla, Buckwheat and Aeryn. John carefully ripped out the page and handed the notebook back.  
  
Aeryn looked at it for a long moment, running her hands across the cover. Then she tucked it in the hole and began pushing dirt on top. When the notebook was covered, John placed rocks on it, building the base of a pyramid. After forming a solid bottom, Aeryn joined in, and the two of them worked in silence until the whole pyramid was complete.   
  
They sat back and surveyed their work. A breeze rustled through the glade, cooling the sweat on John's face and tickling a hair out of Aeryn's braid.   
  
There was no name on the stones, no cross, nothing to indicate whom this grave belonged to. John pulled out a knife and began scratching on one of the larger rocks. It was tedious work and would take forever to put in his whole name. So he settled for his initials, "JRC." He wanted to put in the year he'd been born and the year the other guy had died, but he didn't know how years were measured out here, and it really didn't matter anyway.  
  
At Aeryn's questioning glance, he explained the initials. She touched the rock where they were carved and adjusted its position.  
  
"Is this it?" she said. "Are we finished?"  
  
"Well, usually there's a religious ceremony," said John, "but I'm not very religious. And people always say nice things about the person, to help remember the best about them. And we put flowers on their grave. Then after everything else, there's a reception with all the relatives and a ton of food."  
  
John stopped. There would be no relatives or reception this time. No potato salad and cold cuts. No casseroles that froze well. Dad, his sisters, his Aunt Ruth, no one would know about this moment. And once Moya starburst away, no one would come visit the grave.   
  
The back of his throat burned. His eyes stung.   
  
"You say nice things about them?" said Aeryn.  
  
John nodded.  
  
Aeryn moistened her lips. "He was a brave man." Her voice was thick with emotion and it was hard to understand the words. "He ... died saving us. He was a hero ... I never knew someone ...who ..."  
  
John stood up. "You've got the hang of it now. I'll - I'll meet you at the pod." As he started across the glade, he folded his notebook page in order to stick it in his belt pouch. But his fingers landed on the flower he'd plucked earlier, the yellow one that looked almost like a rose.  
  
John pulled it out and walked back slowly. Aeryn watched him the whole way, watched him as he tilted back a stone and set the flower stem underneath so it wouldn't blow away. The brightness of the yellow practically glowed on the gray rocks.  
  
"I'm not sure how well I knew him," he said, his voice cracking. "I don't think I wanted to. But now that he's gone, I'm sorry."  
  
He patted the rocks. "If I ever make it back to Earth, I'll tell Dad about you. You won't be forgotten."  
  
As he turned to go, he glanced at Aeryn. She had a hand over her mouth and her eyes were wide and shiny. A tear leaked out and rolled down her face.  
  
He nodded toward the tree and the rest of the glade. "It's a good spot."  
  
"Yes, it is," she said.  
  
Then he walked quickly out of the glade and down the path, letting the wind dry his face. Eventually, the smell of the woods loosened his throat and he slowed down. He took his time the rest of the way back to the pod. His thoughts were of Aeryn and Earth and home.  



End file.
